The number one question I am asked when folks find out I am sugar-free is if my kids are sugar-free too.

Chip is only 9 months old so he is 100% sugar-free. Sausage is 2 1/4 years old, so she is the ‘mostly’. My second most-asked question is what on earth I give her to eat if she’s sugar-free, like she must live on gruel or something.

Having a mostly sugar-free toddler isn’t too hard when they are used to eating this way. I imagine that transitioning a toddler off large amounts of the white stuff wouldn’t be much fun! I feel exhausted just thinking about it…

Sausage is a pretty good eater (for now). She’s not too fussy, eats most fruit and vegetables, and generally eats what we eat – although she draws the line at Ryvita (yuck!), vegemite (I DON’T like it!) and lettuce (that’s digusting!).

She does however, have a massive sweet tooth, especially for chocolate. Her diet isn’t 100% sugar-free, but then it’s not my intention for it to be. I believe in taking an 80:20% approach to what my kids eat. I think forbidding my kids to eat any sweets, cake etc only serves to increase its desirability, which can lead to bizarre behaviour and attitudes towards food. My mother once told me about some children she knew who were never allowed any sweets at all. They got into serious trouble for shoplifting their ‘forbidden fruit’. I also have a friend who grew up without being allowed to eat anything ‘bad’ – he was always sent to parties with a box of his permitted food – and he went crazy when he finally left home for university. He had an enormous stash of chocolate at all times, and slept with several cases of cola under his bed! His unhealthy relationship with sweet stuff continues to this day.

So Sausage does get some sugary stuff during her week. It’s a lot less than the average child I think, and I think it’s easiest just to tell you what she might eat in a ‘typical’ day here in Tawhero.

Breakfast: She eats weetbix or cornflakes, sometimes with a bit of fruit on top (like the feijoas we have in abundance right now). I can’t get her to eat porridge but you can be sure we’re working on this. Pretty much any other cereal here in NZ is riddled with sugar. Some cereals can be 30-40% sugar and yet are promoted as being healthy such as Nutrigrain or Sultana Bran. And most cereals peddled at children, such as ‘Honey Puffs, Cocoa Pops, and Frosties’ are incredibly sugary.

Occasionally I make her scrambled eggs or pancakes for breakfast. She likes pancakes just with butter.

Just FYI, I don’t limit fruit. She’s a toddler and has more energy in her little finger than I have in my whole body.

Morning Tea: Morning teas can be my trickiest meals in terms of curbing her sugar intake. We attend two play groups that provide morning tea, and they always, always, always include sugary biscuits/cookies. They are not the worst offenders in the biscuit world (i.e. they tend to be cream wafers or vanilla wine biscuits) but they seem to be a staple at play groups, along with providing fresh fruit. One group sometimes provides a diluted raro drink (a powdered sugar drink) which I ignore and give her water (Sausage rarely has juice, and when she does it is very diluted. She’s never had soft drink. She is fine with drinking water or milk). I realise of course that I could forbid her to eat the biscuits, but one during the day isn’t going to hurt when they are often the only sugary things she eats that day. I could even bring her own morning tea, but I don’t for the above reasons. I’ve have spoken to the play group organisers but it falls on deaf ears.

Don’t get me started on what adults are given to eat at play groups. I have NEVER been offered anything savoury. It’s always chocolate biscuits (in front of the children too!). Fortunately I seldom need a snack in the mornings otherwise I’d go home with a grumbly tummy.

If we are at home, or at Playcentre where we bring our own morning tea, she eats things like boiled eggs, crackers (home made), cheese, hummus, vege sticks, fresh fruit, yoghurt*, sandwiches, cucumber and tomato slices, tuna, chicken or some sugar free baking if I’ve been particularly organised.

* I haven’t been able to convince Sausage that unsweetened yoghurt is delicious, so I sneak it in to her commercially prepared sweetened fruit yoghurt at a 50:50 ratio. I will be gradually increasing the unsweetened ration, mwahaha!

If we are out and about and are not organised we do occasionally give Sausage biscuits (just keeping it real). Griffin’s do a fruit digestive that is surprisingly low in sugar. They are the best of the bunch if you are in a pinch.

Lunch: Sausage is addicted to peanut butter sandwiches (home made, preservative-free bread, for those who have asked). We use Pic’s 100% peanut brand, which is in my opinion, the best ever. I will eventually have to wean her off onto other spreads as many schools forbid PB due to increasing numbers of kids with deathly peanut allergies in attendance. Anyway, lunch is often a PB sandwich, with vege sticks, cheese, fruit or whatever else is to hand.

Afternoon tea: Usually similar to morning tea.

Dinner: Sausage eats what we eat, unless it’s a highly spicy curry.

Sausage does get the occasional sugary treat such as ice cream or chocolate from us and her grandparents, and I allow her to eat what she wants at birthday parties – but she isn’t really on the party circuit like older kids can be. She is always my litmus test for any sugar-free concoction I make, as if it pleases her, it is generally a hit with everyone.

In New Zealand we have a ‘celebrity’ psychologist called Nigel Latta. He’s predominately worked with troubled children and their families, and is pretty much my parenting guru. I love his laidback approach to parenting, as he reckons parents today are so bombarded with parenting information that we tend to overthink things. I’m in Camp Nigel. I think the parenting industry is big business and mostly only serves to make us anxious that we are screwing up the lives of our dear little ones.

Anyhow, Nigel has fronted a range of tv shows on differing subjects (not all parenting related) and his latest one is brilliant. Not so imaginatively called ‘Nigel Latta’, the show is a six part documentary on what he sees as the major issues facing New Zealand at the moment. It’s been a confronting and depressingly grim show and yet contains enough hope that successful ways to tackle these issues are possible. He looked at inequality in New Zealand, domestic violence, alcohol, our education system, our prison system, and SUGAR.

The episode was called ‘Is Sugar the New Fat?’ I’ve been on this sugar free journey for a couple of years now and am well aware of the evils of the white stuff, but let me tell you, this show terrified me. D and I were very disturbed by it and it has certainly strengthened our resolve to be a sugar-free family. Now for us sugar-freers, there wasn’t a great deal of new information in the show, but the guy knows how to put a show together. Nigel talked to sugar slaying Dr Robert Lustig who talked about the addictive nature of sugar, and its insidious addition to processed food. Nigel looked at how much sugar is in staple NZ foods, and talked to the people who put it in there. He also featured blogger nz sugar free who went sugar free when his wife was diagnosed as being pre diabetic. Both husband and wife lost loads of weight and the wife is no longer in any danger of becoming diabetic.

Nigel even went sugar free himself for the show. He thought he had a healthy diet (low fat milk, muesli and fruit for breakfast) and exercises regularly, but his bloodwork told a very different story. After two months of being sugar free (and removing other refined carbohydrates) his bloodwork was well within the normal range and he’d lost some weight.

One of the most disturbing parts of the programme was Nigel talking with dental surgeons who regularly perform teeth extractions on toddlers whose teeth have rotted due to excess sugar consumption. They even showed some extractions. It was horrendous. Two and three year olds needing multiple teeth extracted because their parents thought it was ‘okay to put coke in their bottle’. The dentists said these surgeries (which cost megabucks) are on the increase.

Toddlers needing teeth extractions is not okay.

Having spoken with friends, I know that most people who watched the show were horrified at how much sugar was contained in their food (Marmite and some canned tuna, for instance). I hope this dialogue gets some traction as I believe we need to angry at the food industry for what it’s doing to us. At what it’s doing to our kids. As Nigel points out in the show, the World Health Organisation recommends that children consume no more than 4 teaspoons of sugar a day. Most NZ children would probably surpass that by breakfast time, given the sugar-laden cereals that are peddled at children.

The show has prompted me to get tough with my toddler to protect her pearly whites (we’ve been a bit complacent in the wake of Cyclone Baby). In my next post I’ll tell you what that looks like in practice and pass on my tips for sugar-free toddlerness.

As Eloise is sort of walking (she still demands you hold her hand a lot) I reckon she may now be officially classed as a toddler. Since turning 1, the past few months have seen an explosion of development, particularly with her language skills. She’s a very early talker (so was her Dad) to the point where I can have conversations with her, where she will give me a one or two word reply, or nodding/shaking of her head. Her comprehension scares me, even when I think she’s not listening – trust me, those little ears are listening and they definitely get the gist of whatever is being talked about.

Since hitting 15 months the dreaded food pickiness has started to appear. Up until now Eloise was a good eater. She didn’t eat much, but like most babies she would take pretty much whatever was on offer. But now she has matured, thank you very much Mummy, she definitely lets us know what she wants to eat. It’s often not what is in front of her. In fact, I suspect if she could prepare her own meals, she would live on peas and yoghurt. Possibly even mixed up together.

I try not to make a big deal about her refusal of food, nor do I run about making something else she prefers instead. That way lies madness. Eloise still eats a reasonable variety of foods – particularly fruit and vegetables. She’s also in the 91st percentile for weight (also for height, we hope we are raising a future basketballer) so she’s definitely not starving herself! With sugary foods D and I have adopted an ‘okay in moderation approach’. I simply just don’t fancy being one of those Mums who comes along to every party with a baggie of food for her kids, as they aren’t allowed to eat the party food. Eloise doesn’t get sweet stuff very often, but she isn’t on the party circuit…yet. That bridge will be crossed soon enough I suspect.

Like all kids, Eloise prefers sweet things. Fortunately most of her playgroups are pretty good about encouraging healthy snacking, so her morning teas tend to involve crackers and fruit, and maybe a wafer biscuit (cookie for my American readers) on the old occasion. Water is given instead of juice. It’s really great to not have to worry about this as we go to playgroups 3 or 4 times a week. The PARENTS on the hand are always offered chocolate biscuits. I can only recall once being offered anything savoury for morning tea at a playgroup, so I dodge chocolate biscuits, muffins and cake on an almost daily basis. I get weird looks if I nick a piece of fruit that has been left untouched by the kids.

Eloise is all kinds of crazy about banana (‘Na-Na!’) and these pikelets go down a treat with her. (Pikelets are also known as drop scones, by the way.) This is not an earth shattering recipe, but these pikelets are easy and quick to make, and most kids gobble them up pretty quick – especially if smeared with butter.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. In another bowl beat egg and banana until well mixed. Add this, along with the milk to the sifted ingredients. Mix until just combined (they can go rubbery if you overmix). Drop a tablespoon full of mixture onto a hot, non-stick pan. Turn pikelet over when bubbles start to burst on the top surface. Cook the second side until golden.

Eloise enjoying her pikelet

This post also appears on my new blog ‘Tots in Tawhero’ at http://totsintawhero.wordpress.com